JUDGMENT

KRISHNA IYER, J. :— A litigation with a social dimension, even in a blinkered adversary system, serves a larger cause than the limited lis before the court. This petition, with non-specific reliefs, is one such.

2. Sobraj, the petitioner, by the frequency of his forensic complaints against incarceratory torture and Dr. Ghatate, his counsel, by the piquancy of his hortative advocacy of freedom behind bars, have sought to convert the judicial process from a constitutional sentinel of prison justice - which, emphatically, it is - into a meticulous auditor - general of jail cells - which, pejoratively, it is not - although, on occasions, thin partition do their bounds divide. Often, as here, the fountain of confusion in penitentiary jurisprudence is forgetfulness of fundamentals. Once the legal basics are stated, Sobraj, with the disingenuous, finical grievances, will be out of court.

3. What are the governing principles, decisionally set down by this Court in Batra and Sobraj? Has the court jurisdiction to decide prisoners charges of violation of rights? If it has, can it meddle with the prison administration and its problems of security and discipline from an innocent distance? Put tersely, both the hands off doctrine and the take over theory have been rebuffed as untenable extremes and a middle ground has been found of intervening when constitutional rights or statutory prescriptions are transgressed to the injury of the prisoner and declining where lesser matters of institutional order and man-management, though irksome to some, are alone involved.

4. Contemporary profusion of prison torture reports makes it necessary to drive home the obvious, to shake prison top brass from the callous complacency of unaccountable autonomy within that walled-off world of humans held incommunicado. Whenever fundamental rights are flouted or legislative protection ignored, to any prisoners prejudice, this Courts writ will run, breaking through stone walls and iron bars, to right the wrong and restore the rule of law. Then the parrot-cry of discipline will not deter, of security will not scare, of discretion will not dissuade, the judicial process. For if courts cave in when great rights are gouged within the sound-proof, sight-proof precincts of prison houses, where often, dissenters and minorities are caged. Bastilles will be re-enacted. When law ends tyranny begins; and history whispers, iron has never been the answer to the rights of man. Therefore we affirm that imprisonment does not spell farewell to fundamental rights although, by a realistic re-appraisal, courts will refuse to recognise the full panoply of Part III enjoyed by a free citizen.

5. This proposition was not contested by the learned Additional Solicitor General Sri Soli Sorabjee. Nor does its soundness depend, for us, upon the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Art. 21, read with Art. 19 (1) (d) and (5), is capable of wider application than the imperial mischief which gave it birth and must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency and dignity that mark the progress of mature society, as Batra and Sobraj have underscored and the American Judges have highlighted. Fair procedure is the soul of Art. 21, reasonableness of the restriction is the essence of Art. 19 (5) and sweeping discretion degenerating into arbitrary discrimination is anathema for Art. 14. Constitutional karuna is thus injected into incarceratory strategy to produce prison justice. And as an annotation of Art. 21, this Court has adopted, in Kharak Singhs case (1964) 1 SCR 332 at p. 357 that expanded connotation of life giving by Field, J. which we quote as reminder :

"Something more than mere animal existence. The inhibition against its deprivation extends to all those limbs and faculties by which life is enjoyed. The provision equally prohibits the mutilation of the body by the amputation of an arm or leg, or the putting out of an eye, or the destruction of any other organ of the body t